The Language of a Mission

Extract

The liturgical congress, held at Uden near Nijmegen in Holland last September, was in a sense a successor to those which were held in recent years at Lugano and Assisi, and one may hope that it will be of no less importance in the history of the Church. By turning attention to the problems of the Liturgy in the missions its scope was in one sense more restricted, but in another sense it was much enlarged. There is, on the one hand, more scope and freedom for the development of the liturgy in the missions where the field is less trammelled by the past than in Europe, and on the other hand, the problems of the liturgy in the missions have an even greater urgency. This was brought out by Bishop Blomjous of Tanganyika in his opening address, when he showed how the Church has reached a moment of crisis in the missions. When we speak of the ‘missions’, we are speaking of the new world of Asia and Africa which is coming into being at the present time and which is undergoing a radical transformation year by year. The problem of the liturgy in the missions is nothing less than the problem of the Church in the face of this new world.

The Congress was admirably representative of this new world. It was presided over by Cardinal Gracias and included about thirty bishops and thirty priests from different parts of Asia and Africa, besides experts on the liturgy from all parts of Europe and America.